


Nothing Below

by alianora



Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 13:57:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2814458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alianora/pseuds/alianora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warren needs more than a fortune cookie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Below

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blueyeti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueyeti/gifts).



There was a small pile of envelopes on his bed when Warren got home from work. He was sweaty, tired, and he was pretty sure he smelled like sweet and sour chicken from the plate that he’d managed to drop on himself while bussing tables.

He grimaced at the envelopes and decided to ignore them until after he had showered and gotten some homework done.

Classes at Sky High as a senior were kinda weird, he had ultimately decided. Things had been shuffled around each year after all the stuff with Gwen and the sidekicks. It had thrown the whole school off, and Warren had walked in on a teacher planning meeting where Boomer was disagreeing with Mr. Boy about the differences in teaching sidekicks and heroes, and Principal Powers was informing them that, not only were the sidekicks and heroes to be trained together, but also each kid was to attend classes based on ability - not just on age or power level.

Warren didn’t much care, to be honest. He hadn’t cared before they decided to combine the classes, and he didn’t care much now. The main difference now was that Stronghold and Layla were in his classes for Intermediate Plans and Plotting, and he had to deal with taking his afternoon class of So You’re Considering Villainy with the purple chick and the glow worm. What did they think they could do as villains, anyway? Chew things? Threaten people with bright colors?

Whatever.

His shower was short, as the hot water had been shut off again, and both his mom’s and his tips had been crappy lately. There were benefits to being a fireball, but his mom had forbidden him from using his powers in the bathroom after he had melted the shower curtain when he was 14, so he had to suffer through the cold.

He had to duck to put his head under the water, because the shower in their apartment was ridiculously small and he could barely fit his whole body in the stall, much less turn around in it. He had to contort his body a little to let the water run down his face, but he stayed there for several minutes, trying not to think about the mail that was waiting for him in his bedroom.

Finally, though, the chill got to him, and he was too tired to be able to stop the flash of flame that licked down the insides of his elbows to his wrists, and he made an annoyed face at the smell of burnt plastic from the shower curtain after he got his power back under control.

The curtain was only a little singed, though, so maybe his mom wouldn’t notice. She didn’t need to be worrying about his control when he was exhausted - she had enough to worry about. He toweled off his hair and threw his towel around his waist without bothering to look in the mirror - it was too late, he was too tired, and he still had homework.

He shoved the mail off his bed and ignored it, finally burying in under two textbooks and a supposedly non-flammable notebook and resolving to deal with it all in the morning. 

He ended up falling asleep still in his towel, drooling onto his study guide for an upcoming test on world supervillains - which included, of course, entirely too much information on his dad: weaknesses, how he was defeated, and an annoying amount of glowing praise for the Commander’s use of clever tactics to take him down.

Awesome.

His dreams that night alternated between his head being held underwater and being laughed at by the Commander, who was posing with one foot pressed to Baron Battle’s back and one hand holding Stronghold’s arm in a victory pose while Stronghold looked somewhere between mortified and idiotic. Which was business as usual for Stronghold’s face, in all honesty.

Warren woke up late, shoved all his things in his backpack, and suffered through a morning of “How to Support Your Co-Hero,” which was a new class that seemed to be based entirely on figuring out ways for those with major powers to make those with minor powers feel better about themselves. It was a required class that he had been avoiding since they introduced it, so it was no surprise that he was the only senior in there. He took advantage of that fact by growling a very small squeaky freshman into giving up the desk in the very back of the room. Mr. Boy taught it, so it was easy enough to glare and look annoyed and be given a wide berth. He ended up falling asleep on his desk, and couldn’t bring himself to care. He woke up to see everybody else leaving for an assembly that he had no interest in attending. Mr. Boy helpfully ignored the fact Warren wasn’t with the rest of the class and pulled the door shut behind him - practically washing his hands of Warren’s upcoming truancy.

Layla was waiting for him outside the classroom, her hair pulled up on top of her head in some elaborate braid thing that looked to be tied with tendrils of ivy. She was leaning against the wall, absorbed in scribbling something in a notebook and didn’t even look up when he walked out the door.

“Let me see it,” she demanded without raising her eyes and looking for all the world like she was talking directly to her notebook.

“See what?” he asked as flatly as he could. “And shouldn’t you be at the assembly with the rest of the nerds?” He might tolerate Layla better than anyone else, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still irritated by people on a daily basis.

Especially the nerds in Stronghold’s main group of friends - all of whom had somehow decided that Warren actually liked and tolerated their company instead of being very annoyed by the fact they were always underfoot and generally useless.

Layla was an exception. Well, she was always underfoot, but she wasn’t useless. She had even made Warren out and out laugh on occasion, which didn’t happen all that often. She was good in a crisis, and she’d helped him out more than once with his Biology homework. 

She was frowning at him now, which would probably be more effective if she was aiming that face at a carrot or something, because she looked about as threatening as an angry bunny. Especially with her nose squinched up the way it was. She rolled her eyes at his response and ducked under his arm, deftly grabbing his backpack off his shoulder.

He spun to catch her arm, but she was already walking away, her bag slung over her shoulder, and his backpack dangling from one hand while she opened it to root around inside with the other. “Your college acceptance letter, doofus,” she called over her shoulder. “I know you must have gotten it by now.” She waved behind her in the vague direction of the gym, “And besides, the assembly is about a new version of Power Placement, which is supposed to ‘streamline’ the time it takes to evaluate each student's’ strengths and interests, but still just sounds like another way to separate the supposed future heroes from the useless little people.”

Warren winced as he fell in beside her and shoved his hands in his pockets. He ignored the rant, which he had heard several variations of over the past two years. “I might have,” he acknowledged, answering her original statement and watching her rifle through his backpack with increasingly frustrated faces, “but I haven’t opened either...um. I haven’t opened it yet.”

Layla stopped dead in her tracks, one hand still inside his backpack. 

He kept walking for another few steps before slowing and running one hand over the back of his neck where he could feel Layla trying to stare through his skull. He closed his eyes in resignation and waited.

“Either?” she repeated slowly. “Either?!”

By the sound of it, she had just dropped his backpack on the ground with a thump.

He dragged his hands down his face before turning around. “Uh,” he shrugged, very interested in adjusting the cuff on his wrist instead of looking directly at her stunned face, “I might have changed my mind and mailed in the other application, too.”

Layla squealed, and suddenly her arms were around him and squeezing the air out of his lungs. His arms came up around her automatically and he stumbled backwards a step before he got his feet back under him. Seeing as her feet were dangling an inch or so above the ground, it was probably a good thing one of them was standing.

“I am so excited!” She spoke mostly into his neck, so it was a little difficult to understand her, but he got the idea from the tone of her voice. 

He bent to put her down, but she clung tighter to his neck and shook her head. He rolled his eyes and tried to spit her hair out of his mouth when he figured out she had no intention of letting go just yet. He was crouched at an awkward angle, and was relieved when she finally leaned back far enough he could stand up straight again.

She beamed at him. “I knew you would turn it in!” She bounced on her feet and clapped her hands together as her eyes widened. “But we have to open them!” She rushed back to his backpack and sat down crosslegged in the middle of the hallway like they wouldn’t get hassled into going to the assembly or assigned detention when a teacher came by.

Warren rolled his eyes. He grabbed her by the upper arm and hauled her to her feet, ignoring the squeak of surprise that made her sound more like a chipmunk than a bunny, and tugged her outside to the tiny garden where he would sometimes stay instead of dealing with class, or Stronghold and his band of nerds.

Layla immediately got distracted by greeting the new sprouts coming up and a bud that flowered underneath her fingers and gently headbutted her wrist. She laughed and let it twine around her arm into a bracelet before sitting back on her heels and turning her smile on Warren.

He rolled his eyes, but his heart wasn't in it. “Fine,” he sighed and hauled his backpack up beside him on the bench and fished out the two crinkled envelopes and placed them between himself and Layla.

They both stared at them.

“Are you going to open them?” Layla asked, her voice curious, but her eyes not leaving the envelopes in front of her.

“No.”

They studied the letters for another second before Layla gave a decisive nod and reached for the one of the right.

“Wait,” Warren reached out and stopped her hand, “What if it’s no? What if they’re both no?”

She looked up at him with the same fearless eyes she had used when she had plopped herself down at his lunch table a couple of years ago and told him he was going to the dance with her. Layla might have quailed at dealing with her feelings over Stronghold, but she’d never shown the slightest bit of hesitation in dealing with Warren - regardless of who his dad was or his reputation for setting things that irritated him on fire. She turned her hand in his light grip - until her strong fingers were linked through his, and the small flower that had decided it needed to be a bracelet had twined its way around his wrist, linking them together with fragile life. Her look was solemn when she said, “Then you can be Sky High’s newest bus driver.”

He choked back a surprised laugh. He was still holding her hand, and she didn't seem to be in any hurry to let go.

“Really, though,” she said practically, “either you got in, or you didn’t.” She shrugged. “You can't change the future by avoiding it.”

“You sound like one of our fortune cookies.” Warren nodded to the waiting letters underneath their clasped hands.“What about you, then? Which would you open?” 

“I suppose it depends on if I want to be a hero or a villain.”

“And if I don’t know?”

She waved at the envelopes with her free hand, “These don't decide your future. Go and be a hero, or don’t. Go and be a villain, or don’t.” Her eyes crinkled as she smiled, “Or just go be whoever - a banker or a lawyer or a lifeguard. Labels suck, anyway.”

Warren nodded slowly. “On three, then? You open one, I'll open the other.” He looked up at her, squeezing her fingers once before withdrawing and reaching for an envelope.

“One,” he said.

“Two,” she chimed in.

“Three,” they said together, and opened Warren’s future.

END


End file.
